[On July 24, 1847, a weary group of about 150 migrants founded Salt Lake City. So for the city’s 175th birthday, this week I’ll AmericanStudy Utah histories, leading up to a special weekend post on that founding community!]
On just a
few of the many communities and stories of indigenous Utah.
1)
The
Paiute: That particular hyperlinked Paiute history comes from the branch of
the tribe located in modern-day Oregon—but it features one of my all-time
favorite Americans, Sarah
Winnemucca, who was the daughter and granddaughter of chiefs and who became
not just a vital spokesperson and activist for the tribe, but one of the most
inspiring 19th century Americans from any community. And while the
tribe, like most in the US, did spread out across a region that encompasses
multiple states, it was indeed particularly
part of modern-day Utah, including fraught
and violent encounters with Mormon migrants in the mid-19th century
that have to be front and center in any story of the state’s history.
2)
The Goshute: It
was the Goshute who had the most consistent such encounters with Mormons and
other white settlers to Utah, however, as a significant portion of the tribe were
native to the
desert region right around Great Salt Lake. As a result of that proximity
the federal government began attempts to remove the Goshutes to a reservation
as early as the late 1850s, but the tribe successfully resisted those attempts
for more than half a century; when they finally gave in to removal in 1912, it
was to the Skull
Valley Reservation, only about 50 miles from their ancestral homelands. Every
tribe’s experience of histories of removal and the reservation system is
distinct and worth full collective memory, but the Goshute in particular offer
a crucial reminder of that system’s frustratingly arbitrary nature.
3)
The Ute:
The Ute reservation, located about 150 miles east of Salt Lake City, is the
nation’s second-largest and a complex
and multi-layered setting in its own right. But of course indigenous
communities are in no way defined by the histories and aftermaths of their relationships
with white communities, and despite this series’ overall subject I don’t want
to focus only on those dynamics in this post either. Instead, I’ll note here
the Ute’s close association with two elements of Utah’s stunning landscapes (on
which more in tomorrow’s post): their longstanding connection to the buttes
which in 2016 became the basis of the Bears
Ears National Monument, a site managed by members of the tribe among other
indigenous communities; and the centuries-old Ute petroglyphs
near Arches National Park (on which more tomorrow as well). Indigenous Utah
long predates white settlement, and remains as present on the landscape as its
communities are in the state in 2022.
Next Utah
history tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Other Utah histories or stories you’d highlight?
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